Luther Campbell's days as a member of 2 Live Crew, cutting wildly misogynistic tracks that shocked and appalled Tipper Gore and led to a famous Supreme Court victory for free speech, are behind him. He's a father now, married to a lawyer, and he has a respectable job as a high school football coach in Miami.
He also takes time to pen a column for our sister paper, the Miami New-Times, and he's just about had it with the way the media has handled Deion Sanders' foray into education with Prime Prep Academy.
The media, Campbell writes, is wrongly portraying Sanders' school as a self-aggrandizing attempt to manufacture an athletic juggernaut, and gleefully charging Sanders with playing the race card when he called WFAA's Brett Shipp an "African American killer."
On that, "Sanders is absolutely right," Campbell writes. "Before his school even opened its doors, Prime Prep has been receiving an unfair amount of scrutiny just because of his involvement. The negative press has destroyed Prime Prep's athletic program before it even got off the ground."
He goes on to wonder why high-profile private schools seem to escape scrutiny while shamelessly recruiting athletic talent. "But when a controversial black celebrity athlete wants to offer children a better education, he can't be trusted. All of sudden, reporters can't wait to expose him for doing what private schools fielding nationally competitive athletic programs do every day."
Prime Prep's football team turned out to be pretty terrible, going 1-5 after being barred from district games. In basketball, in which a star player can make much more of an impact, Sanders is doing considerably better after borrowing several players from Arlington's state champion Grace Prep Academy.
Campbell also neglects to mention the general shadiness surrounding Prime Prep, which we detailed back in May.
